Mirroring a WordPress site?
March 8, 2020 8:45 AM   Subscribe

I manage a WordPress site, with a blog and a ton of files, custom theme, etc. My host is closing up shop so I need to move it to a new host. Is there a simple "Mirror this site" tool I can use, either a plugin or very simple command line instructions?

I've poked around in the WordPress plugin directories and things either seem to just do back-ups (and I tried one but I couldn't "restore" a backup to a site that hasn't made one) or they only get the blog content and I am looking for the whole site.

I've got limited support over at the new site (ibiblio, so not one of the biggies), though I have the WP database all set up, so a bunch of trial/error stuff isn't super helpful. I'm a decently sophisticated end-user--I can ftp, ssh, chmod etc--but can't code things. Can pay money if needed. I have til the end of the month. Not looking for any non-WordPress solutions. Thanks.
posted by jessamyn to Technology (11 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
You can do it by exporting then importing. Here are some tools.
posted by The Deej at 8:50 AM on March 8, 2020


(By the way... I think last time I did it, I just used the built in function under the Tools menu.)
posted by The Deej at 8:52 AM on March 8, 2020


Response by poster: Sorry, should mention I tried the native import/export tool and it assigned all 1000 blog posts to me because I guess it didn't import the users? Or the theme? But that post does link to me to migration tool that might work, thank you.
posted by jessamyn at 8:56 AM on March 8, 2020


Best answer: I've personally had excellent results with Duplicator to migrate a WordPress site away from a company that seemed to be about to implode onto an AWS instance. I've also used it to clone the site to a different host name for testing purposes.

It creates an archive of the entire site and a PHP script to restore it onto your new host. You just upload those two files to the right place on the new host, run the PHP script by hitting it from a browser, and it recreates everything. I didn't even have to log in to Wordpress admin on the new host, as my existing session info came along for the ride.

I am not sure what it requires from the hosting platform or if it will work smoothly on all of them. I was moving a site from a dedicated VM to another dedicated VM, so had all the access needed and there was no one else to worry about on the same machine.
posted by FishBike at 9:04 AM on March 8, 2020 [4 favorites]


+1 for Duplicator. Updraft Plus also will do it.

This is a daily or weekly part of my job.
posted by humboldt32 at 9:41 AM on March 8, 2020 [2 favorites]


Duplicator is great for this. It creates an exact image.
posted by pyro979 at 10:08 AM on March 8, 2020


I used the Duplicator plugin to move multiple sites about a year ago, and it went pretty smoothly. (I did one thing wrong and had to untangle it, but that was my fault.)

I was transferring to Dreamhost, and used their instructions, which may also be helpful to you: I don't think there's anything host specific that isn't obviously host specific (i.e. replace with your host info)
posted by jenettsilver at 4:12 PM on March 8, 2020


Response by poster: Excellent. I used Duplicator and it got me 90% of the way there. I am now just trying to work out a fiddly issue (likely.htaccess) where my posts aren't showing up. That is, I can see them in the database but they don't show up when I go look at them, I get redirected to a web host's 404. But I have help with this part of it so I think this is mostly solved. Thanks everyone!
posted by jessamyn at 3:41 PM on March 9, 2020


You just need to resave the permalinks.

WP > Settings > Permalinks
posted by humboldt32 at 2:07 PM on March 10, 2020


Response by poster: I did that. I think part of the issue is the permissions settings on my root directory because my .htaccess file isn't writeable by Wordpress and then when I just tried to update it manually (creating the file and then sftp-ing it in and changing it to the right permissions) my whole site hung. Will talk to the sysadmin tomorrow and see if he has ideas.
posted by jessamyn at 2:13 PM on March 10, 2020


Response by poster: Final update: I spoke to my host, there was some weird "Oh apache owns those files" issue to get that part working and now the permalinks are perma and I think we got all the other stuff worked out. Thanks much everyone for your help.
posted by jessamyn at 1:18 PM on April 7, 2020


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